A new pattern of red blips crossed my vision; I thought I heard something, something outside of the ravages of hallucination, but I willed it away; I wanted to be left alone, to be ill, violently ill, anything, anything to end this terrible sickness, when suddenly my skin seized up all over.

Someone had just touched my arm.

I saw him through peaks and swirls of color; his sounds echoed in my head for days. I struggled to sit, to stand, but flopped on the ground instead, my muscles no longer connected to my nerves or my brain. There was one thing, I remembered, that would calm the raging storm inside my head.

I moaned, long and loud; it smoothed the waves of color into sedate pools of light. It evened out the rampaging echoes and calmed my fibers. I took a deep breath and calmly unleashed a mantra that relaxed me and brought a sense of my being back into focus.

The boy lifted me and carried me to the back of his pickup truck. There were two boys, as I now recognized; one was unrolling a sleeping bag while the other held me. I mustered all my strength and will and concentrated on forming my words carefully. “My cane,” I said. My symbol.

The boy who held me smiled down at me. “We got your cane, don’t worry. We’re going to take you to the doctor, so just don’t worry.”

I concentrated again. “Sarah,” I said. “Sarah’s house.”

The boy lay me on top of the sleeping bag, the other put my cane by my side. I listened to them talk between themselves. “Do you suppose she means Sarah Monroe?”

“Sarah’ll probably be able to help her.”

“They must know each other.”

“Sarah’ll at least know whether we should take her to the hospital, you know?”

“Won’t hurt. She’s at least making sense. Jesus, what do you think she was doing in that dumpster?”

“Sniffing paint.”

“Jesus.”

“C’mon, let’s go.”

The doors slammed red slashes across my vision and the truck pulled out, each movement dragging some nauseating color across my eyes. Again, I was at the mercy of strangers. Again. But they were taking me to Sarah’s, I would be there in a matter of minutes. This would be the last time I would be at someone’s mercy.

The last time.

“I know that the police have a lot of things going on at the same time, and even though they were doing their best, their best wasn’t very good. The police in different counties don’t even communicate with each other, much less the police in different states. The Federal system finally pulled it all together, but holy smokes, it took a long time.